Principal Lynne Phillips opens the front door for a parent at Marshpoint Elementary School. The front doors remain locked, with rotating members of the administrative staff stationed throughout the day.

Ulysses Bryant, chief of campus police for the Savannah-Chatham County Public School System, says it could be summer before improved school safety measures are created for the district in the wake of the deadly school shootings in Newtown, Conn.

Across the country, officials have been re-examining school safety policies and proposing changes in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy that left 20 children and six adults dead after a gunman opened fire inside the school.

School safety legislation is currently in the works in the Georgia General Assembly.

The tragedy has spurred some Savannah-Chatham principals to make changes to security protocols.

As for the wider school district, it will take deliberate steps to revise its safety measures but not rush to implement unproven tactics, Bryant said.

“Whenever these unfortunate and tragic shooting events occur, there’s an outpour of, shall I say, school safety experts,” Bryant said from his Bull Street office.

“When Columbine came about, there was an outpouring of sales pitches and some districts spent tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars rushing to implement things because it was advertised. It didn’t enhance their security.

“So working fast is not always the best way to do it. It’s got to be deliberate and have objectives and goals.”

Recently, Bryant was given additional job responsibilities as executive director of the district’s Division of Safe Schools to direct security plans for schools, he said.

Superintendent Thomas Lockamy has charged him with organizing a task force of citizens, teachers, students, public safety and other officials from all levels of government to come up with a comprehensive safety plan for the district.

Under review

Before the Dec. 14 Connecticut shooting, Bryant organized representatives from various agencies to conduct a safety assessment for the Garrison School Visual and Performing Arts on West Jones Street, after parents voiced some safety concerns.

A few minor suggestions concerning lockdowns and video surveillance were included in a subsequent seven-page assessment Dec. 6. However, most of the recommendations were administrative, such as installing signage, placing mirrors in main offices to calm disgruntled visitors, identifying an off-campus family reunification spot for emergencies and creating identification cards.

In the end, the school was determined to be “safe” and officials will work to implement the recommendations at Garrison, Bryant said.

In light of Sandy Hook, plans are under way for the district to conduct similar assessments at every school. Those began at elementary and K-8 schools on Feb. 7.

Under review, Bryant said, will be each school’s emergency preparedness plan, consideration of fencing around buildings and an examination of access into facilities, including whether to install entry buzzers at schools without them, the placement of existing surveillance cameras and purchase of cameras for schools without them.

Most middle and high schools, as well as some elementary schools, have security cameras, Bryant said.

The district will also review previous security assessments and surveys conducted at each school in 2008, Bryant said. He also plans to meet with a security consultant about access control.

Resources coming?

Included in its gun control plan, the White House is proposing a new Comprehensive School Safety program, which would give $150 million in grants to school districts and law enforcement agencies to hire up to 1,000 more school resource officers, school psychologists, social workers and counselors.

Among other recommendations, the Obama administration asks Congress to provide $30 million in one-time grants to states to help school districts develop and implement emergency management plans.

However, it advises schools to take responsibility for getting effective plans in place.

In response to Sandy Hook, the Charleston County, S.C., school board voted in January to allow school resource officers to be stationed in its North Charleston elementary schools in addition to full-time officers already in middle and high schools.

In December, Duval County, Fla., public schools increased the presence of school resource officers ­— who were already assigned to middle and high schools — to elementary schools.

Presently, Savannah-Chatham public schools have 37 armed school resource officers posted at middle and high schools who respond to elementary schools when requested.

Bryant said adding more officers is something being considered, as well as hiring retired police or military personnel.

A week after the Connecticut shooting, Bryant said he sent a letter to police chiefs in Chatham County, Sheriff Al St Lawrence and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to reaffirm their partnerships.

“Just about everyone that has a stake has been calling and offering advice or input,” Bryant said.

The goal is to come up with a set of safety recommendations that can be implemented around the entire district.

However, it’s important to note that not all the recommendations will be applicable to every school, since each is different, Bryant said.

Soon, but not very soon

How soon the recommendations will be finalized, as well as their total cost and source of funding, is up in the air, Bryant acknowledged.

“We’ll only be able to do about two of them a day,” he said of the school assessments, adding there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. To finalize and then review the reports will take additional weeks, he said.

“It will probably be well into the early summer before we’re going to have some clear objectives or some action plan as to what needs to be fixed, and how do we fix it,” Bryant said. “Then, of course, the bottom line is how much will it cost?”

Some educators, however, aren’t waiting to decide what to do about security in their schools.

Marshpoint Elementary School Principal Lynne Phillips, who has a sister in Connecticut, heard about the Sandy Hook shooting while attending an administrators meeting on Oatland Island.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she later recalled thinking.

The Monday following the massacre, Marshpoint Elementary’s 16-member emergency response team, composed of teachers and staff, met to review safety practices. Phillips then sent a letter dated Dec. 22 to assure parents the school would take immediate action to improve safety.

The 900-student pre-K through fifth-grade school on Whitemarsh Island already had multiple lockdown practices, monthly safety drills and regular door checks, Phillips stated in the letter. And like many schools, it has long been standard procedure for visitors to sign in at the front office.

But on Jan. 3, Marshpoint began locking all of its front doors instead of leaving one left unlocked. Now, teachers and custodial staff working in 30-minute rotating shifts take turns to let visitors inside.

“Safety over convenience,” Phillips said, reciting Marshpoint’s safety motto. “When they walk into that door, that’s my baby until I have to hand them back to their parents.”

Other changes are in the works, and PTA and school council members are involved, said Phillips, who plans to meet with Bryant.

She had an informal meeting several weeks ago with parents who brainstormed proposals that included installing cameras, a buzzer system and even bulletproof glass.

Security efforts vary among schools.

Shuman Elementary School Principal Marilyn McDonald said her 760-student east Savannah school, which has buzzer and camera systems, has been taking a second look at its safety precautions and making minor revisions, but major changes haven’t been made.

“I think that we have increased our vigilance,” McDonald said.

“We have created a sense of awareness amongst our staff to stress the importance that we must ensure that our students are supervised at all times and that we know who’s in our building.”

Gillian Warmkessel, an active parent of two Marshpoint students, said she would like the district to better communicate its plans.

“I’m encouraged with the direction that our school is taking to ensure the safety of our children, but I still believe there’s work to be done and it doesn’t happen without the involvement of parents,” Warmkessel said.

The past as prologue

A Savannah native and longtime police officer, Bryant said one of the city’s worst acts of school-related violence occurred in 1996, when a Jenkins High School student fatally shot another student.

Keith Antwone Green was convicted of killing Dwayne Cedric Martin on campus at the end of the day as students were boarding buses.

In 1993, a Beach High School student on his way to school was chased by a group of boys and shot, Bryant recalled. Jaison Kelly, 15, was struck in the abdomen and died four weeks later. Aron Gilliam, then 16, was convicted of felony murder.

In 2000, three teenagers were shot outside Beach High toward the end of a school dance. Savannah High School sophomore Ramone Kimble, 16, and Stacy Smalls, 19, were killed, while 16-year-old Lamar Jenkins, a Beach High freshman, was injured. Darrell Ingram, then 19, was convicted in the slaying.

Just this year, two shootings took place at apartment complexes within blocks of White Bluff Elementary School on Jan. 21 and 23. Both incidents took place after dismissal.

Still, nothing like the mass shooting at Sandy Hook has occurred.

“I still have a problem wrapping my mind around it,” Bryant said. “It just shows it can happen anywhere and at any time.”

A 2009-10 School Survey on Crime and Safety, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, found that while 84.3 percent of public schools had a written plan in response to a shooting, only 51.9 percent had actually drilled students on the plan in the past year.

Savannah-Chatham public schools do have a protocol in place for an active shooter emergency.

Before the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, it was common procedure for first responders across the country to set up a perimeter upon arriving on scene and wait before deciding to proceed. Today’s best practice calls for a response that is “deliberate, precise, expeditious and the intent of the first responders is to locate, isolate and neutralize the threat,” Bryant said.

Inside the school, staff are trained to go into a “hard lockdown” by locking doors and immediately placing all students behind locked doors — whether inside a classroom or broom closet — and covering windows, Bryant said.

“The main thing is to get the staff and children behind locked doors,” he said.

Big changes possible

Statewide, drastic changes in how school officials might respond to an active shooter are being considered.

A bill introduced by state Rep. Paul Battles, R-Cartersville, that would allow local school boards to arm principals is making its way through the legislature. Gov. Nathan Deal has voiced support for the measure — predicting its passage — along with proposing the state’s review of mental health records for gun permit applicants.

Meanwhile, state Sen. Ronald Ramsey, D-Decatur, chief legal officer of DeKalb County schools, has introduced a similar bill that would allow public elementary school employees, designated as “para-protection officers,” to carry guns on campus.

The Georgia Professional Association of Georgia Educators, the state’s largest professional teacher organization, has not taken an official position on the legislation.

But while supporting the need for school resource officers, spokesman Tim Callahan said, “To have safer schools, we need fewer weapons and not more.”

Phillips, who is in her third year as Marshpoint’s principal, said she is uncertain whether educators should be given firearms.

“I know it needs to be looked at; I know that people are talking about it, but I’m not sure,” she said.

At the end of the day, no matter how much or well one plans for such an unpredictable event, incidents can happen, said Bryant, who has studied the issue for years.

Thus far, he said he has not seen anything that has proven 100 percent successful in preventing a school shooting.

“I know I wanted to know why and I know we will probably never know why,” Bryant said of Sandy Hook.

“But then I come in here every day, my wife works in one of the schools and I’ve got grandchildren and great-grands in the schools, some as young as pre-K and some as old as seniors ... I’ve got more than a passing interest; I’ve got a vested interest.”